Monkey + Seal: Your Friendly San Francisco-based Artists

Hello everyone! As you can probably see from the sidebar, Monkey + Seal is the collaboration between the San Francisco-based artists Rick Kitagawa and Eve Skylar.

The quick and dirty: Monkey + Seal love to make cool art prints, rad shirts, awesome ties, and much more cool artsy stuff. We also write a blog on Wednesdays that talks about the challenges of being professional artists and how to overcome them. We hope you browse our shop, stop by the blog, and we'd love for you to become part of the Monkey + Seal family by signing up for our mailing list by filling out the form to the right - get blog posts mailed to you, sneak peeks, our upcoming events, and exclusive deals and presales!

If you'd like the longer story of who we are, please keep on reading!

The Monkey + Seal story really starts about 25 years or so ago, when Rick and Eve were wee little ones running around drawing on printer paper (the kind with the tear-off sides that got fed through those pre-laser printers) with crayons. As kids, Rick quite resembled a Monkey, with his wide ears and big smile. Eve had many Seal-like qualities, with a round face, large eyes, and a penchant for the water.

Fast forward to 2005. After meeting in UC Berkeley's Asian American theater troupe, the two realized that their true passion was art (not English or Integrative Biology) and

decided to go back to art

school for a second Bachelor's degree.

After enrolling at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, these two intrepid artists devoured their classes, hungry for the knowledge and skills they would need to become professional artists. Along the way, they discovered gallery curating, craft show organizing, and much much more. They realized that while their true dream was to change the world for a better through their art, they themselves were a bit indefinable: Eve studied visual development for film and games, but found work in illustration and a love for painting. Rick studied illustration, but found himself in the printmaking and painting studios most of the time, and both ended up doing graphic design work on the side.

Thus, Monkey + Seal was born to create an individual space for these two artists who are part of a growing generation of creatives who are not fine artists nor illustrators nor animators nor designers, but are an indistinguishable mix of all of the above. Additionally, they have found a growing number of people who want to be artists, but believe that they can't. So, Monkey + Seal have decided that they want to bring other artists up with them on their quest towards changing the world, and resolved to become Artists Empowering Artists.

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We are working to challenge the notions of what it means to be an artist, and we hope you'll be along for the ride. If you are another artist, an aspiring artist, or someone who just wants to be more creative, we hope that we can offer some inspiration and insight into your goals and how to reach them. Thanks for stopping by and don't be afraid to say hi!